By Any Other Name
by sapphireswimming
Summary: Sam, meet Sam. Oh. That's going to get confusing pretty quickly if we work together, isn't it?


**You guyyyys, this was just going to be a five hundred word discussion of how they were going to differentiate between Sam and Sam but it kept on growing longer and longer and sprouting more plot bunnies and now it's turned into this. help.**

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**By Any Other Name**

April 21, 2013

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Dean shifted his weight restlessly, grumbling under his breath. Sam looked over and shook his head with a knowing smile. Then, with amused patience, he pointed out, "Dude, this was your idea, remember?"

Dean threw him a withering glare before pacing the few feet to look around the corner of the high school building and check, for the ninth time since they had been waiting, that the impala was just as he had left it, the only car in the lot, bright lamppost shining directly overhead so he would be able to see anyone even thinking about getting close to his car.

Satisfied for the moment, Dean returned, digging his feet into the ground a little heavier than necessary. "We told Danny we'd come, didn't we?" he groused, knowing the answer already and also knowing it meant that they could not just leave now. Even if the kid hadn't come when he said he would be there.

Sam looked down and scuffed the toes of one shoe along the edge of the grass as he leaned against the brick wall, trying to appear nonchalant. "Yeah, we did."

Dean looked around again with a calculating gaze. "He did say by the high school football field, right?"

Without the kid's cell phone number and not knowing the layout of the town, the only thing they could really do was to stay at the rendezvous point and wait for him to show.

Sam nodded, and knew his brother would catch the motion, even in the darkness. He pursed his lips a moment as his eyes trailed across the empty outdoor stadium. "Bring back memories?"

"Memories of what?" Dean asked after a moment, voice carefully neutral.

Sam shrugged. "School. Jocks. I don't know…"

_Those weeks at a time when we actually had a normal life_, was the line attached, clearly conveyed even if it was unspoken.

Sam kept a close eye on his brother to see how he processed the question, the topic of a "normal life" always a bit touchy, and wondered if he had probed too deeply with the question when Dean seemed to look anywhere but him for the next few moments. But it wasn't avoiding his gaze, Sam soon realized. Dean was looking at the white lines on grass, the metal bleachers, drinking in the memories of their snatches of schooling as he looked over the darkened field.

"School and jocks, Sammy?" Dean parroted. "Really? Not so much my thing," the elder Winchester finally replied with a shake of his head, before breaking out into a grin. "But cheerleaders? Now those were some good memories."

Sam snorted at the glib answer, but some tension eased out of his frame. They were good. So he smiled. "Wasn't there one time when you almost joined the football team just so that you could get a date with, oh, what was her name?"

"Oh yeah!" Dean breathed at the sudden recollection of the memory. "Yeah, Julia… Marks. Yeah, cheerleaders were practicing off to the side while football tryouts were going on. She was checking everyone out so I thought why not sign up?"

"Right," Sam laughed, "because you don't get beat up enough in our life and had to volunteer for a game where the sole purpose is for everyone to dog pile the guy with the pigskin."

"Well, it's not like we were actually going to be there long enough for me to play anyway, Dean defended his reasoning. Realizing as soon as the words had left his mouth that it was a point of contention between them and not meaning to instigate anything, he continued, "Not that that mattered, really. For some reason they didn't want me on the team."

Sam quirked an eyebrow at him. "Oh really? And why was that?"

"Eh, something about me not playing well with others, if I remember right." The grin was almost tangible in the words.

"Right," Sam drawled, trying to keep the chuckle from disrupting his words. "You sure it wasn't because you played a little _too well_ with others, hmm?"

"Hey, it's not my fault that—" Dean stopped and slipped into his game face in a fraction of a second, cheeky grin replaced by chiseled features that meant business. Sam reacted to Dean's reaction, mirroring his protective stance as he looked around for whatever had triggered his brother's honed senses.

A moment later he discovered it, three figures appearing from behind the locker rooms and walking toward them. They were standing deep in shadows and nobody could have seen the brothers were there unless they'd arranged the meeting.

Sure enough, he recognized the figure in the middle from the spiky hair silhouetted against the streetlamp they had just passed under. Danny Fenton. He eased off, but only fractionally, because he had no idea who the other two people were.

Dean, always the point man, stepped in front of him, out into the light as they drew nearer. Not holding any weapons, but with a handgun tucked into the back of his jeans and no doubt an assortment of various blades tucked around his person for easy access should danger present itself.

"Dean," Danny greeted, unsurprised at the man's sudden appearance. When he nodded at the still-secluded Sam with pinpoint accuracy a moment later, they realized that he had known where they were the entire time. As if things weren't disconcerting enough.

"Danny," Dean replied as Sam moved forward since the cover of deeper shadows wasn't concealing anything apparently, "Now what was so important that you couldn't tell us at your house, huh? And who are your friends?"

"Sorry for the wait, guys," Danny said, not answering either question but addressing the issue that had Dean wound up so tightly. "We…" he paused for a second, "got held up."

Sam canted his head. "Ghost problems?" he asked softly.

"Yeah," Danny confirmed. Then took a deep breath. "Alright, introductions first. Guys, these are the Winchesters. Sam and Dean. They're the hunters I was telling you about."

At the mention of their names, Sam gave a tight smile and nod while Dean tilted his chin upward, rankled that he was still in the dark about identities, but understanding that of course they were on the kid's turf and he would want his friends to be in the know first.

"And these are my best friends, Sam Manson and Tucker Foley."

Dean's eyes assessed the pair flanking the teenager he already knew. It was Sam who said, "Nice to meet you," for the both of them.

A slim black haired girl in an odd assortment of cut-off layered clothing and metal studded jewelry matched his even stare with a fiery one of her own, just daring him to brush her off with a flippant comment. On the other side, a black kid in a beret's face was lit up by a handheld screen whose information he checked while under scrutiny although Dean could feel attention on him coming in small glances over the edge of thick rimmed glasses.

Satisfied for the moment that they weren't dealing with a couple of brats, Dean eased up enough to relax his stance as much as he could ever allow himself to do in public. "Alright, then what was it you wanted to tell us?"

Danny took in a deep breath and asked if they wanted to relocate to the stadium bleachers seeing as they might be there for a while.

After relocating, Dean pinned the trio with an expectant stare. Sam tried to look more interested than intimidating.

"Okay, so why are you guys really here?" Danny asked.

Sam blinked. He thought it couldn't have been more obvious why they were in town. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, a couple months ago, we had a call for professional ghost hunters from around the country to come capture a ghost for a million dollar reward. And you didn't come then. But you claim to be ghost hunters even though you aren't like any hunters I've ever seen and now you come when everything's as normal as our town gets. So…" he paused, shaking his head. "Why here, why now?"

"Well, we're not just ghost hunters," Sam explained. "We go after all sorts of supernatural creatures. Skinwalkers, demons, poltergeists, cursed objects… vampires, you name it."

"Wait," Tucker cut in. "You're saying there are vampires? That they're real?"

"Yeah," Dean confirmed. "Werewolves and stuff too, but there's not anything like your "Twilight" crap. That's bull. Vamps are nasty dudes. But yeah, we'll hunt ghosts too."

"You realize you sound crazy, saying that vampires exist, right?" Danny asked them.

"You realize your whole town believes in ghosts?" the younger Winchester countered.

"Touché." Then after a pause, "You still didn't answer my question, though. Why now? Why didn't you come before?"

Dean shrugged. "We travel all over, normally get our jobs from local papers wherever we happen to be. Our info comes from our own grapevine or research. Learned a long time ago that responding to mass "ghost hunts" normally lands you with a group of inexperienced crazies going after the town drunk's UFO sighting."

"So how did you hear about Amity Park?" Sam asked.

"We were working another case in Illinois, saw the headlines in a gas station. Bought the paper because we thought it was really weird that an entire town would buy into a ghost story. Even as a tourist trap, most towns' press doesn't make official claims about hauntings."

"Makes sense, I guess," she admitted.

"And as soon as we started asking around, everyone told us to "go to the Fentons! They're the ghost experts," they said. So we stopped by your house to find out what we could."

The silence stretched on a little too long.

"Weird situation you've got going on here, man," Sam supplied, hoping that Danny would talk about whatever it was he wanted to say but couldn't when they had been to his house earlier that afternoon.

"Yeah," Danny agreed. "Yeah, it is. Are… are you guys planning on staying?"

Sam and Dean glanced at each other for a moment before Sam hesitantly responded with a furrowed brow, "We thought we would. Any reason why we shouldn't?"

"No," Danny replied slowly. "It's just, if you guys are going to be staying for a while, you'll need people who know what's going on and how to fight these guys."

"You're saying we can't take care of ourselves? We have been fighting these things ever since…" Dean broke off before continuing in a more subdued voice, "for a long time, you know?"

"I believe you," Danny said. "But at my house you kept on asking about salt and stuff."

"Yeah," Dean said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Classic ghost fighting weaponry."

Tucker made a face as he tried not to laugh.

"Well, it doesn't work against the ghosts here," Danny said.

"What?" Sam asked, suddenly very interested.

"It doesn't do anything to the ghosts here," Danny repeated, sounding like he was completely serious. "I don't know what you think you can do with salt against other ghosts in the country, but if that's the only thing in your arsenal here, you're going to run into problems real quick. See, it's stuff like this that you won't know about until it's too late. We've been hunting ghosts ourselves for a couple years now. And we're pretty good at it." Danny glanced at his friends and they shared big smiles. "So you promise one thing and we'll help you out, back you up, show you how things work around here, answer any questions you have. Sound good?"

The Winchesters considered the offer, weighing the pros of getting the low-down on how to fight this odd brand of ghosts against the cons of putting all their trust in three teenagers who shouldn't have been fighting in the first place. Not that they could really judge that one, given how long they'd been in the game.

Dean bit. "What's the one thing we'd have to promise?"

Danny looked at them both with a suddenly assessing stare. "You don't go after Danny Phantom."

"And who might that be?"

"He's a ghost that also hunts ghosts. He's the good guy and pretty much the reason why nobody in town has died yet," Sam answered.

Sam and Dean looked at them with shock. "Dude, you guys are serious about this?" Dean asked when he saw Tucker nodding and Danny's set face. "You are serious." He paused, looked at his brother. "Sammy?" he asked.

"Sounds like it's our best bet if we're really going to be sticking around." He nodded once at his brother before turning to the teenagers in front of him. "Alright, deal."

The kids smiled, looking as relieved as they were happy.

"Awesome," Tucker said. "Team Winchester meets Team…" he stopped. Blanched. Searched for something else to say, finally settling on, "Man, we should really have a name if we're going to be working together."

Sam smiled. "Well, you get on that and let us know what you come up with."

"Got it," Tucker said, typing a memo onto his screen.

"So," Dean grinned, "we each have a Sam, huh? That will get confusing pretty quickly. We'll need to differentiate somehow."

The girl's glare was as immediate as it was intense. "If you dare even think about trying to call me Samantha, I will kick you where it hurts."

Dean's face scrunched and Sam winced at the threat. There were some things even he knew not to mess with and ticked off teenage girls were one of them.

Tucker grinned, "Yeah, she gets like that a lot," he informed the brothers out of one side of his mouth. Sam whacked him upside the head a moment later. "Ow!" He rubbed at the sore spot. "See what I mean?" And then danced away with a yelp to avoid the second blow that followed.

Danny ignored the shenanigans behind him and addressed the brothers. "What about your Sam? Can we call him Sammy?" he asked, already unhopeful as to the prospect.

"No," both responded at the same time, confirming his suspicion.

"Only Dean gets to call me that," Sam clarified.

"They could call you 'moose,'" Dean offered to his brother with a lopsided grin. "Crowley's called you that a couple times now and I kinda see where he gets it from."

His brother glared. "Shut up, Dean. I'm not responding to 'Moose.'"

Danny rubbed at the back of his neck and sighed, "Okay," clearly wracking his brain for other ideas for their dilemma.

"How about we call them Girl-Sam and Boy-Sam?" Tucker said, absently smiling down as he pressed buttons on the gadget in his hands.

"No," the Goth-girl automatically vetoed.

"Then how about Tall-Sam and Short-Sam?" he asked, instinctively moving to keep Danny between him and the girl who was now looking like she wanted to inflict some further violence upon the boy.

"No, Tucker, that's not going to work," Danny said with long suffering patience that bespoke his long held position as middle man in their trio.

"Well if there can be no arrangement, then we are at an impasse," Tucker quipped in a lowered voice.

The Winchesters both smiled at that. "I'm afraid so," Sam answered with a bit of an foreign tinge to his voice and a helpless raising of his hands.

Tucker looked up at that. "Man, Princess Bride is like the best movie ever."

"Yeah," Dean agreed. "Can't ever go wrong with the classics."

"But that still doesn't solve our problem, guys," Danny pointed out and brought their attention back to the issue at hand.

After a moment's silence, "Hey," Dean said with a jutting out of his chin toward the only female in the group, "That Sam." When he had her attention, "How do you feel about going by your last name?"

"Manson?" she asked doubtfully.

"Would you respond to it?"

A grimace. "Well, it is how our teachers address us," she admitted.

"Awesome," Dean said. "That work for everyone? Girl-Sam becomes Manson?"

Before anyone had time to even nod, she cut it, "Hey, I didn't agree to anything! Why can't your brother go by his last name?"

"There are two of us," Sam pointed out. "It wouldn't help the confusion at all if the both of us went by Sam and my brother and I both responded to Winchester."

_Besides_, Dean heard, _Dad went by Winchester. It was his thing, never ours_.

"Come on," Dean cut in then, "Sammy wouldn't even think to respond to Winchester. Half the time, he doesn't even know what alias we're using at the moment."

"That's not true, Dean," his brother groused.

Then he continued, "And you already go by Manson at school. It's the easiest distinction. Besides," he gave her one of his most persuasive smiles, "it's military. Will go well with your boots."

Sam stared at him nonplussed for a second, then shook her head and ground out, "Fine. I'll go by Manson. And he can be Sam. Everybody happy now?"


End file.
